Monday, 13 February 2017

The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Reception of Faith,
Andrew F. Walls, T&T Clark, 2002
Chapter 2, "Christianity in the Non-Wstern World" (pp. 27-48), page 29

Having reached this point, Walls now expresses the need for translation, both linguistically and culturally, as a mandate:

For Christians, however, the divine Word is translatable, infinitely translatable. The very words of Christ himself were transmitted in translated form in the earliest documents we have, a fact surely inseparable from the conviction that in Christ, God's own self was translated into human form.

The question surely remains, however, where does translation end and re-invention begin? When does the process of transmission into the vernacular stop being translation and start being syncretism or re-invention - a change into something else?